the sun always sets slowly
by Slytherin Cat
Summary: The Doctor doesn't come back, and Amy and Rory are like a sinking ship no one knows how to stop. Fortunately, they're both unable to really let go. AU after season 6, for teddy.


This was written for teddy, who's really awesome and wanted AmyRory… I'm not sure this was what you wanted, but it's how they wrote themselves, for some reason…

Anyway, I hope you'll like it, and that you'll forgive me for being late (it's really not my fault though, they were really stubborn about the way they wanted to be written).

_Word count:_ 2065

**the sun always sets slowly**

**r.**

Some nights, Rory wakes up alone and drenched in sweet in a too cold bed, the sound of his racing heart echoing on the walls of an empty house until it's all he can hear, until he's drowning in it and he can't focus his thoughts on anything else but the blood pulsing through his veins.

He always lies there until the sun rises, until he hears the door open in a move supposed to be discreet and Amy come back.

He feigns sleep until he hears her move in the kitchen, and then he gets up.

Amy never meets his eyes on these mornings.

**a.**

Some nights, Amy can't bear to stay in bed. Sleep just won't come to her, and so she finds herself lying in bed with her eyes open and her mind running through a million thoughts she'd rather not have.

She remembers the last year, and she wonders what she might have changed that wouldn't have led her and Rory to being this shade of the people they were before – it's all her fault, if only she had been stronger, if only she had noticed or… Or done something, anything, then they – she - wouldn't have lost their daughter and they would be busy celebrating the birth of their child like any other couple would.

On those nights, she walks away and goes to a park, and there she tries to remember a time when a duck pond was a duck pond even if it had no ducks.

**r.**

These days, when he sees the stars at night, he doesn't think of the thousands of worlds unexplored they could run to.

Instead he thinks of all the opportunities that they lost and he can't help but resent the Doctor a little for being able to run away from everything so easily.

But then he remembers that he wasn't the only one who was heart-broken when they learnt that Amy was gone, taken from them without them even noticing it, and he sighs.

The truth is, everyone shares the blame on this, and even if the Doctor had found their daughter, it was too late for them to really be a family.

These days, he and Amy are like a train wreck, and he's powerless to stop it. And he hates it.

**a.**

She has a bag packed with everything she needs if she wants to leave packed under the bed. It breaks her heart that she might need it one day, but Rory… Rory is everything to her, but more than that, he's the greatest man she's ever known, and she just knows she's dragging him down.

He wants a family and she can't give him that, not anymore.

Demon's Run took that away from her, and she's never hated anyone more than she hates those people, because they broke her and she's been breaking the heart of the man she loves more than anything ever since.

Rory deserves so much better than her, and that's why she has to leave him.

Even if it breaks her heart too.

**r.**

Rory finds Amy's keys on the counter in the kitchen one evening. He doesn't even need to go to their room to know that he won't find anything that she didn't want him to find.

The Doctor taught them so many things about the world and about life, but he also taught Amy how to run, and that's the one thing he's not sure he'll ever be able to forgive the Time Lord for, Rory thinks bitterly. He taught her so well that Rory knows he won't be able to make her come back if she doesn't want to, and apparently, she doesn't.

He sits on the sofa, and he spends the night staring at his wife's face on the last photograph where they looked happy. He'll wait for Amy to come back, because that's what he does – wait for her.

Always.

_(she'll come back)_

**a.**

Walking away from Rory is like ripping her heart out of her chest – it hurts, it hurts so much Amy wonders if it's even worth it, because if she's hurting then surely he is too and wasn't it what she wanted to avoid, to hurt Rory?

Only it's better for him in the long run, better for him if she's not there to ruin his life like it seems she's been doing since day one.

She has to leave, before she gets him killed again, because she has the feeling that this time would be for good.

They couldn't be lucky forever, and the turning-their-backs-on-death thing they did had to stop one day, because no one lives forever.

She rents a room at an hotel that's definitely seen better days, and she spends her night staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Sleep eludes her, and she wonders if those cracks could send her back to her own past and allow her to erase all of her mistakes like the Doctor once did.

Only then she remembers all that they lived, all the lives they saved and all the good things that happened because she was there, because they visited that particular planet on that particular day. It would be so selfish to take all of that back just because she can't handle a few hardships.

Then again, it all comes down to a choice: Rory, or the rest of the universe.

Once, she would have chosen the universe, because that's the right choice.

Now, she remembers being ripped away from Rory time and time again, and she just doesn't know what she would choose anymore.

**r.**

Life goes on, day after day. Rory had honestly forgotten how much he hated the waiting, the terrible feeling that seeps into his bones and slowly turns his blood to ice, all the what-ifs something happens and he isn't there.

He should have been used to it. After all, he had once waited two thousand years, but he had had a purpose then, and now he just feels lost. Amy left, and he can't even blame her for it because this whole mess is his fault too.

He should have noticed that something was wrong with his wife from the start, he should have been able to save their daughter but he hadn't – he had failed everyone who ever mattered to him, and now he can't quite find a way to fix things.

Every couple he sees in the street seems to drive a knife straight to his heart and he feels like he's losing some kind of battle he wasn't even aware he was fighting.

He wants to fight – desperately so, with everything he has and everything he is – but he doesn't remember how to.

They've lost so many times he doesn't think he knows how to win anymore. Out there, running though the stars, escaping their issues was just so easy that he and Amy never quite to the time to deal, but down here on Earth those issues have found them, and they're not letting go.

**a.**

Amy manages to avoid her husband for a whole month, somehow, before they literally crash into one another.

It feels like the universe is playing a bad joke on them.

Someone, somewhere out there is laughing – she can almost hear it in the wind.

It almost sounds like the Doctor, but that's stupid because the Doctor left and his eyes told her he didn't intend to come back.

She kind of resents him for that, only not really because she imagines having to spend her days with Rory knowing one day he would be gone and she'd still be there, and _oh_, the pain actually takes her breath away as the edges of her world turns white.

That's what cause the crash actually.

It's awkward, incredibly so, especially since they both look so horrible she's pretty sure they could be cast as genuine zombies somewhere, but one look into his eyes and she's lost again, as sappy as that sounds.

She won't remember why she thought leaving was a good idea until the next morning, when she wakes up in their house alone in their bed and finds a note in the kitchen that says 'Went to work, see you later'.

And underneath, half-scratched out lies an 'I love you' like a snake waiting to strike at its prey.

Her hands are still shaking when she gets back to her hotel room.

**r.**

Rory doesn't know how they turned into these two destructive people unable to let go of each other – maybe they've always been that way, but he likes to think that once they weren't.

It's maybe ninety-nine percent wishful thinking, but it makes him feel better every time he and Amy stumble wildly into bed for a night or pretend for a day to have the kind of domesticity they had before.

He'd suggest couple counseling if he didn't already know just how badly that would end, or if he thought Amy would show up.

That's the thing about Amy these days – they never meet when they plan to, but somehow they always find each other when they don't.

They bump into each other in the street, cross paths in libraries and coffee shops, end up hailing the same taxi or waiting in the same queue in the bank.

It always leads to the same results: the both of them in a bed somewhere, behaving like horny teenagers with all the guilt of cheating lovers when they actually are still married and wearing their rings.

Surprisingly – or maybe not, considering how little tact she had every time they met – it's River who points this out to him.

"You know, there's nothing wrong with some spice in your life, but you and mom? You're just being stupid. Get over yourselves, make up once and for all and move past this," she tells him in place of a greeting when he finds her on the sofa, watching some show she loved as Melody – and thinking of he and Amy's best friend growing up as his daughter was still something he hadn't gotten used to.

"It's not that simple, you know. Amy's very stubborn about this."

"Please dad, you're just as stubborn as she is. And she loves you. Finding a way to make her stay shouldn't be too hard for you." And she smirks and changes the subject, recounting her latest trip to 'this little planet, you wouldn't know it, but they make the best chocolate sundaes in the universe, you'd love it, and have you heard that…'.

He uses the lull of her stories to stop thinking about her previous words, but it doesn't really work. They're still the only thing he has on his mind when he goes to sleep.

She's gone by the next morning, but there's a Tardis blue note on the fridge and a bouquet of Amy's favorite flowers on the kitchen table.

The note says _'oh, and by the way, it really is that simple'_, and on the back of it River stuck dinner reservations for two and the list of movies still in theaters.

**a.**

Rory shows up at her hotel just as she's leaving her room. He looks kind of awkward with the biggest bouquet of flowers she's ever seen in his hands, and maybe it's the light or maybe it's something else entirely, but in that moment he seems so alive and so _Rory_ she's reminded of why exactly she fell in love with him.

That's when it hits her, and it's so glaringly obvious she can't believe she's managed to somehow delude herself into thinking she could force herself to stop feeling this, that she could somehow protect Rory – and herself too, because she realizes now that she was mostly scared - by separating them.

Rory won't leave. It's the one truth she somehow managed to forget.

It's good though, because she really doesn't want him to – not anymore. Somehow, those past few months have taught her what their life together hadn't: that they really are in this together.

Mr. Rory Pond and Mrs. Amy Williams, wandering through life with no idea of where they're going; only knowing that they'll be together.

It makes a rather nice summary for their lives, she thinks.

Well, it's one she can definitely live with.


End file.
